Felix Baumgartner

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Felix Baumgartner (2013)

Felix Baumgartner (born April 20, 1969 in Salzburg ) is an Austrian former base jumper and extreme athlete . He achieved international fame with the Red Bull Stratos stratospheric jump .

Life

Baumgartner completed an apprenticeship as a machine fitter and then worked as a car mechanic. At the age of 18 he signed up for five years in the Austrian armed forces . He was trained as a tank driver and later served as an instructor and parachutist in the Army Sports and Close Combat School in Wiener Neustadt . Since, according to his own statements, he had problems subordinating himself and following “stupid orders”, he was classified as militarily unsuitable and dismissed from the armed forces. Also in Wiener Neustadt, he joined a boxing club and completed a professional fight against the Croatian Dinko Porobija on May 8, 1992, whom he defeated by knockout in round 1.

In 1996, after training by Tracy Lee Walker in Bavaria, he made his first object jump from the New River Gorge Bridge on Bridge Day . Since then, Baumgartner has made over 2,600 parachute jumps, 130 of them object jumps. Baumgartner has been a professional base jumper since 1997 and has been sponsored by Red Bull ever since . The prelude was the title for Best Overall Performance at Bridge Day 1997. Baumgartner achieved this title in West Virginia against 350 participants.

His registration with the United States BASE Association in 1998 gave him the number 502, which made him a registered trademark of Baumgartner: the logo with the flame and the number 5.0.2. Every jumper who can be shown to have jumped all four object types (BASE = Building, Antenna, Span [bridge] and Earth [cliffs]) can apply for such a number from the American Association. There are now over a thousand numbers assigned.

In 2006 he took part in the Wok World Championships in Innsbruck.

After his stratospheric jump on October 14, 2012 (see below ), Baumgartner announced that he would withdraw from extreme sports with immediate effect. He expressed his intention to work as a rescue helicopter pilot every six months in the Alps and in California.

After the Austrian tax authorities refused to recognize Baumgartner as a top athlete in 2013 and to grant him the associated tax discount, Baumgartner moved to Switzerland. Authorities confiscated his house and helicopter. Since then, Baumgartner has lived in Arbon ( Canton Thurgau ) in Switzerland.

In 2014 Baumgartner started the ADAC Zurich 24-hour race on the Nürburgring.

Jumps

On April 15, 1999, he jumped from the 88th floor of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur . To do this, he had observed the building for days, scouted out the security personnel and disguised himself as a businessman and gained entry to the building. He had smuggled the parachute he used to jump off a window cleaning crane in a briefcase.

On December 7, 1999, at 7 a.m., he jumped from the right arm of the Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro with a parachute. Before doing this, he let himself be locked in on the site, then climbed a rope that had been shot with a crossbow to the jump point.

On March 2, 2003, he and Günter Karnutsch climbed the east face of the 2,950 m high Sass Pordoi in Italy and jumped from the summit with a parachute. It was the first joint project between these two extreme athletes.

On June 1, 2003, Baumgartner performed the main stunt for the 2003 Taurus Awards in Hollywood . Equipped with a carbon wing , he held a competition against a 368 kW Pilatus Porter propeller machine. The flight itself took place over Lake Powell , Utah . Baumgartner won the race with a top speed of 240 km / h.

The carbon fiber wings used to cross the English Channel, exhibited in Hangar-7

On July 31, 2003, Baumgartner became the first person to glide across the English Channel from Dover to Calais . He jumped from a Skyvan at an altitude of 9,800 meters (temperature −52 ° C) and wore an oxygen mask, a special insulating suit and a wing made of carbon fibers with a span of 1.8 meters. He covered the 34-kilometer route at a top speed of 360 km / h in 6 minutes and 22 seconds. The aircraft used for this jump, which was still experimental at the time, was called SkyRay (English sky = sky, ray = stingray ) and is now being further developed as a military weapon system under the English name Gryphon (griffin). Baumgartner opened the parachute at an altitude of 1200 meters and landed on Cap Blanc-Nez near Calais, although the responsible authority in France had prohibited landing there.

On June 27, 2004, Felix Baumgartner jumped from the Viaduc de Millau . An object jump on September 10, 2004 from the Puente de las Américas bridge , which connects North and South America, led to a brief detention in Panama. Also in 2004 he jumped into the 190 meter deep bottle-shaped cave shaft of the Mamethöhle in the Velebit Mountains (Croatia).

On August 18, 2006, he jumped from the Turning Torso in Malmö , Sweden, the tallest building in Scandinavia with a height of 190 meters. The jump was preceded by a jump from a helicopter with a target landing on the roof of the building. According to his website, Baumgartner fled to Denmark by motorcycle and speedboat after the jump.

At 4:18 pm on December 11, 2007, he jumped from the 390.2-meter-high outer observation platform on the 91st floor of the 508-meter-high Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan . The day before the parachute was smuggled past security by a Taiwanese friend and hidden by Baumgartner in the ceiling paneling of the toilet on the visitor platform. Baumgartner landed in a parking garage, disappeared into Taipei traffic and left the country two hours after the jump by plane for Hong Kong .

More jumps

Jump out of the stratosphere

Pressure capsule, exhibited in Hangar-7 in Salzburg

Baumgartner ascended into the stratosphere on October 14, 2012 from Walker Air Force Base near Roswell , New Mexico (USA), with a helium balloon in a pressurized capsule, in order to jump with a protective suit and parachute. After the jump, he submitted three key data to the FAI for recognition as a world record:

  • The highest jump of a parachute jump to date with 38,969.4 m . This record was previously held by Joseph Kittinger with 31,333 m . Kittinger set this record on August 16, 1960 as part of the Excelsior project . Baumgartner's record lasted until October 24, 2014, when Alan Eustace jumped from around 41,419 m.
  • The deepest free fall at 36,402.6 m. This record was previously held with 24,500 m by Yevgeny Andreyev , who set it up near Wolsk in 1962 .
  • The highest speed achieved in free fall with 1357.6 km / h without a stabilization screen. Baumgartner set the previous record of 864 km / h in July 2012.

Controversial statements and political statements

In 2012 Baumgartner spoke out against parliamentary democracy. You ca n't move anything in a democracy . You need a “moderate dictatorship ” by a “few people from the private sector ” who “really know their way around”.

When asked whether a move into politics was an issue for him, Baumgartner said in an interview with Alles Roger? in April 2017: “Under the current conditions, I think it's a complete waste of time. Should Austria ever introduce direct democracy , it would be worth considering. ”The goal must be direct democracy based on the Swiss model .

On January 25, 2016, Baumgartner triggered a shitstorm on social media with a text image posted on Facebook about refugee policy . The article reads: “A country in which fishing without a fishing license is legally punished and people without a passport cross the border can only rule IDIOTS!” The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, on the other hand, deserves for his political dealings with the migration movement and for the border guards a Nobel Peace Prize . “Because he did the only right thing. TO PROTECT HIS COUNTRY and its PEOPLE, who chose him! ”He also criticized Angela Merkel for her refugee policy. In 2016, Baumgartner commented positively in a Facebook post about the appearance of the activist of the Austrian Identitarian Movement Martin Sellner in a TV discussion program. In May 2016, Baumgartner made his support for the FPÖ presidential candidate Norbert Hofer public and shared verbal attacks against his political opponent Alexander Van der Bellen on Facebook .

With regard to women's rights, Baumgartner asked: “How far are we ready to give up our identity and our culture and mix them with a completely different religion and ideology? What will happen to our WOMEN RIGHTS if we have to share this country with a culture where women have NO rights? "

In April 2017, the Austrian Puls4 presenter Corinna Milborn criticized an advertising photo of the Palmers textile company as "sexist". Baumgartner replied: “It's nice when some of you get upset again at home, even at Easter! Above all, Puls-4 information manager and presenter Corinna Milborn, no wonder with the figure! ”Baumgartner rejected an invitation from Milborn to discuss his image of women and its effects in her broadcast, throwing her“ masturbation in social networks ”and spoke of“ swinging the club of sexism ”.

In 2019, Baumgartner published a post on Facebook that was directed against the satirist Jan Böhmermann . Baumgartner deleted the contents, but it quickly got into circulation. The text was a reaction to Böhmermann's interview in an ORF magazine, in which he said, among other things, that eight million "debiles" lived in Austria.

Awards

Honor on the street of the winners ( Mariahilfer Straße , Vienna )
  • 2012: Bambi in the Millennium category
  • 2012: The Men of the Year 2012 ('The Man of the Year 2012') from Top Gear magazine .
  • 2013: Laureus World Sports Award in the Action Sportsman of the Year category
  • 2013: Flying magazine : Listed 51 Heroes of Aviation as the youngest person alive
  • 2017: Men's Journals : Inclusion in the list The 25 Most Adventurous Men of the Past 25 Years ('The 25 most adventurous men of the past 25 years')
  • 2017 Negative Prize Rosa Handtaschl , awarded by the Austrian women's network Medien
  • 2017: Naming of an asteroid after him: (239716) Felixbaumgartner
  • 2018: Induction into the Hall of Fame of pilots and astronauts as Living Legend of Aviation ('Living Legend of Aviation')

literature

Web links

Commons : Felix Baumgartner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ wecarelife, Austria
  2. ↑ BoxRec - Felix Baumgartner ( Memento of the original from February 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / boxrec.com
  3. ↑ Wok World Cup: 10,000 spectators. In: vol.at. March 12, 2006, accessed June 21, 2020 .
  4. ↑ The daring Felix jumped from 39,045 meters, picture , October 14, 2012.
  5. ↑ a b Why Felix Baumgartner is not an athlete. In: derStandard.at. Retrieved February 10, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Margrit speaker : Felix Baumgartner: His deepest case. Die Zeit, November 14, 2013, accessed on February 10, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Baumgartner makes a record jump. St. Galler Tagblatt , October 14, 2012.
  8. ↑ What was going on, Mr. Baumgartner? Der Spiegel, December 6, 2004
  9. ↑ Felix Baumgartner Jumps the Torre Mayor Red Bull.com, February 1, 2006
  10. ↑ Parachutist's Record Fall: Over 25 Miles in 15 Minutes
  11. ↑ Google manager breaks Baumgartner's record FAZ.net, October 25, 2014
  12. ↑ Red Bull Stratos: Felix Baumgartner had a pulse rate of 169 at 1,357 km / h redbull.de, February 7, 2013
  13. ↑ Official FAI recognition of Baumgartner's speed record from March 2012 ( memento of the original from December 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English); Accessed: October 16, 2012.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fai.org
  14. ↑ a b Brown stages of a hero - Baumgartner's deep fall with a right twist. n-tv, October 26, 2016.
  15. ↑ The goal must be direct democracy. In: allesroger.at , accessed on May 27, 2017.
  16. ↑ a b c Felix Baumgartner becomes political and jumps into the shit storm . In: salzburg.com , accessed on May 27, 2017.
  17. ^ Felix Baumgartner's image in free fall . In: kurier.at , accessed on February 17, 2018.
  18. ↑ Felix Baumgartner attacks journalist with sexist posting . derstandard.at, accessed on January 9, 2018.
  19. ↑ Baumgartner adds insults to the moderator.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. www.welt.de, April 25, 2017.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.welt.de  
  20. ↑ "Stupid Whore Child": Felix Baumgartner insults Böhmermann Der Standard, June 21, 2019
  21. ^ Böhmermann reported by Viennese lawyer. In: Der Tagesspiegel , May 19, 2019.
  22. ↑ Felix Baumgartner: He's getting a Bambi! Bunte.de.
  23. ↑ The Men of the Year 2012 ( Memento of the original from January 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.immediatemedia.co.uk
  24. ↑ Baumgartner "World Action Sportsman" - Second "Sports Oscar" for Austria. orf.at, March 11, 2013.
  25. ↑ Flying magazine: 51 Heroes of Aviation .
  26. ^ Men's Journal: The 25 Most Adventurous Men of the Past 25 Years .
  27. ↑ Media women give Felix Baumgartner their "pink handbag". derstandard.at, April 21, 2017, accessed on April 22, 2017.
  28. ↑ Felix Baumgartner is now a "living legend". krone.at, January 21, 2018, accessed on February 2, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Baumgartner, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian former base jumper and extreme athlete
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzburg